Potential rules loophole: Safety car restarts

[hollus]

In today's SC restart, we had Max leading the field, followed by Checo, followed by Lewis, followed by Valtteri, followed by everyone else. Max was going slowly, as it the case almost always, and all were tightly bunched behind him, as usual.
As some point, Max decides to use his right foot, the normal stuff, and 1-2 tenths of a second later, everyone floors it, all as seen hundreds of times for a SC restart.

But what if...

...they are all bunched behind Max, and when he goes for it and accelerates... Checo does not react. What if he, in second, continues to trundle towards the finish line at 80 km/h...

What happens then?
Has anyone done anything illegal?
(Yes, Checo probably does something illegal, by leaving more ten 10 car lengths to the car in front, but after how many seconds does that become illegal? And would it matter for anyone other than Checo? If we wastes 10 seconds in that drive to the line... can anyone overtake him?

It sounds like a dirty tactic, but would it fly?


Just for clarity, the order of the cars in that example is simply based on today's safety car restart, it might well be green-green-blue-blue next time around.

[NL_Fer]

There are some general unsave driving rules to punish that.

27.4 At no time may a car be driven unnecessarily slowly, erratically or in a manner which could be deemed potentially dangerous to other drivers or any other person.

[RZS10]

Yea that's probably the catch-all which would be applied in such a case

[Juzh]

Probably a driver trough. Remember vettel hungary 2010? Scenario was almost exactly as you describe it. Webber didn't yet pit and needed to create a buffer to alonso in P3 who had already stopped. Vettel helped him (maybe unintentionally) by leaving a gap of more than 2s between him and webber before the restart.

[TimW]

Another possible loophole: what it Verstappen had pitted, and Perez backed up the field such that Verstappen still got out ahead (with fresh tires)?

[MtthsMlw]

Another possible loophole: what it Verstappen had pitted, and Perez backed up the field such that Verstappen still got out ahead (with fresh tires)?

Problem here is that you can overtake after the finish line.

[hollus]

Clearly, in my scenario Perez would get punished. But would the 10-20 second cushion between the car in front and the car behind hold?

[MtthsMlw]

Probably..? I mean what kind of penalty would you impose on the leading driver in that case

[TimW]

Another possible loophole: what it Verstappen had pitted, and Perez backed up the field such that Verstappen still got out ahead (with fresh tires)?

Problem here is that you can overtake after the finish line.

Yes but from pit entry to finish line perez could do much less than the 80kmh pit lane speed ( like Verstappen has often done on restarts)

[TimW]

In the original scenario I think the following drivers could overtake without penalty, because Perez was driving unnecessarily slowly.

[MtthsMlw]

Another possible loophole: what it Verstappen had pitted, and Perez backed up the field such that Verstappen still got out ahead (with fresh tires)?

Problem here is that you can overtake after the finish line.

Yes but from pit entry to finish line perez could do much less than the 80kmh pit lane speed ( like Verstappen has often done on restarts)

I see, similar scenario to what hollus imagined then.
Penalizing Perez in this case would be obvious but does Verstappen have to give up the advantaged gained?

[Just_a_fan]

Isn't there also a rule that you have to maintain a certain maximum distance between cars to prevent a car holding up the pack whilst a team mate zooms away.

[Big Tea]

I suppose the only safeguard is to give the stewards or Masi the power to call 'false start' and have it retaken without the offending driver.
It would need a very serious trigger though.

[dans79]

I think it would be just like in the past when cars stalled during a standing start, the cars behind would just drive around him. Max might have gained a few seconds, but definitely not double digits.

[bosyber]

If Perez had gone that slowly on the straight at the restart, Hamilton and Bottas would likely be easily past before T1, and he'd have the Sainz and Gasly on his tail at least.

That, or a huge pile-up, which yes would likely would have cost HAM a finish, but Perez getting a causing a collision penalty (who got the penalty at last years Portugal GP at that restart?), and potentially, given the huge implication and risk, if there was any radio chatter from the pits you'd hope it would get Red Bull a bringing the sport into disrepute investigation (or would that also have been 'let them race? hm.)